The Last Sovereign

At 90, the Dalai Lama is confronting the future of his reincarnation with resolve and without deference to Beijing.

On July 2, in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala, where he has lived in exile since 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama made an announcement that echoed far beyond the confines of the Buddhist world. “The institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,” he said, adding that the GadenPhodrang Trust - the body headquartered in his own office - would be the “sole authority” to recognise his reincarnation. “No one else has any… authority to interfere in this matter,” he added, in a pointed rebuke to the Chinese Communist Party, which claims precisely that authority.

It was the latest salvo in a long struggle over who controls the soul of Tibet. At stake is the fate of a people whose cultural identity has been under relentless siege.

There was a time when such words might have sounded obvious. But for Tibetan Buddhism in the 21st century, reincarnation has become a battleground. In 2007, the Chinese Communist Party issued an edict asserting that all ‘living Buddhas’ must receive state approval before reincarnating. The idea that a Marxist-Leninist regime would reserve the right to control the rebirth of souls might seem absurd were it not so chillingly consistent.

The Dalai Lama’s statement, issued just days before his 90th birthday, was not new in substance. He had said much the same in 2011. But the timing and the context - his advancing age and Beijing’s renewed assertiveness in Tibetan affairs - give it fresh urgency.

The reincarnation of a Dalai Lama has always been a matter of deep ritual and Tibetan consensus. The process stretches back to the 15th century, when the first Dalai Lama was posthumously recognised as a reincarnation. Since then, the line has been both a spiritual and temporal authority. From the 17th century until 1951, when Tibet was annexed by China, successive Dalai Lamas ruled as de facto sovereigns from Lhasa.

Born in 1935 in the village of Taktser, in what is now Qinghai province, Lhamo Thondup was recognised at age two as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. He was enthroned in Lhasa in 1940 and assumed full temporal power at the age of fifteen, just as Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army was consolidating its grip over Tibet. In 1959, amid the chaos of a failed uprising, the young Dalai Lama slipped out of Lhasa disguised as a soldier and fled across the Himalayas into India. He has never returned, presiding instead over a government-in-exile from Dharamshala. Over the decades, he has transformed his role from that of a traditional theocrat to a modern statesman advocating non-violence, religious harmony and ‘secular ethics’ in a world riddled with conflict and consumerism.

It is precisely this moral authority that the Chinese Communist Party fears. For Beijing, the Dalai Lama is a symbol of Tibetan resistance. That is why China insists it alone can select the 15th Dalai Lama.

In 1995, after the Dalai Lama recognised a six-year-old boy as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama (the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism) Chinese authorities abducted the child and installed their own alternative. The original Panchen Lama, now in his thirties, has never been seen again.

The Dalai Lama’s vision for what comes after him rests with the GadenPhodrang Trust. Founded in 2011 and headed by Samdhong Rinpoche, a soft-spoken scholar-monk and former prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Trust will oversee the search and recognition of his reincarnation, should the institution continue. Two other affiliated bodies - the Dalai Lama Trust in Delhi and the GadenPhodrang Foundation in Zurich - support his broader mission of education, humanitarian work and global spiritual dialogue.

That looming scenario of rival Dalai Lamas, one chosen by Tibetan lamas, the other by Beijing’s bureaucrats, threatens to split the Tibetan community and further dilute international attention. It is also, paradoxically, a sign of how potent the institution remains. No government engineers the succession of a figure it deems irrelevant.

The Dalai Lama remains an eternal paradox in motion. A monk who once ruled a country. A refugee who became a Nobel laureate. And now, a nonagenarian who is preparing his people for a future in which his voice may no longer be audible but his choices and his warnings may shape Tibetan destiny for generations.